Internet Marketing Commerce

Many times some of the smallest changes can increase your conversion rates dramatically. So, let’s start by thinking simple, like what is your traffic doing when they come to your website? What do they do when they first land on your website until their order is complete or isn’t complete? It’s these very simple, but crucial steps that may lead to a dramatic increase in your conversion rate.

The first thing you need to do, if you aren’t already, is track your visitors every move. You need to know how many visitors are creating an account, how long they are staying on what pages, how many are adding products to the shopping cart, how many are getting a shipping estimate, how many are entering their payment information and how many are actually placing an order.

By analyzing how many visitors are doing each on of these things you will be able to get an idea of where the biggest percentage of your visitors are dropping off. It’s a good idea to start here first because it will normally have the biggest impact on an increased conversion rate. So for instance let’s say that your biggest drop off point is when your customers get a shipping estimate. This is normally a sign that your shipping is more than your average customer would like to pay. While you may not be able to get a better shipping rate right away you can do things that give your customers a better price. For instance, it may be worth it to give your customers a discount on shipping and pay more than they are. The reason for this is the fact that it should increase your volume if this is the reason your customers are dropping off. After doing this you may receive enough volume in orders to equal out your profit or even increase it. You may even be able to get a better shipping rate due to the volume of orders you will now be doing. You also need to look at the fact that a good portion of those customers will become repeat customers. This will obviously out weigh the initial loss you had on shipping.

All in all, no matter what part of your website has the biggest drop off rate, you always want to start there first. It will most likely have the biggest impact on your conversion rate due the fact that the majority of your visitors are dropping off there. So before you spend hundreds to thousands of dollars in advertising make sure you’re getting a phenomenal conversion rate.

A lot of people overlook just how important it is for a website to have good usability. A website can look amazing but if your visitors can’t easily shop and purchase you are loosing thousands of dollars. If a customer can’t easily find what they want to purchase it they will most likely leave your website and go to one of your competitors. It’s a very simple concept, the easier you make it for your visitors, the easier they will make it on you.

In order to effectively test the usability of your website you need to get together a group of people who have little to no knowledge about what you sell. Give them a list of products or product types to find, and then watch them to see just how easy it is for them to navigate around your website and find the products or product types. This will give you an idea of what your customers are doing and things you might need to change to give your website a better usability. It’s a good idea to change one thing at a time if possible and then see what your conversion rate is. This way you will know if that change is helping or if it’s hurting your business.

There are certain things that you need to look out for when you’re watching your testers. If your testers hit the back button in their browser this means that they didn’t find what they were looking for. This means that particular link or description they just read was misleading and needs to be looked over.

Reading something over again is also a sign of a problem. This means that what they were looking at was confusing and should be looked over. The navigation of your site should be simple but just enough information to tell them where that link will take them.

When your testers hesitate this is also normally also a problem. If a website has good usability the user shouldn’t have to think too hard. There movement should be smooth and fairly quick unless they’re reading a product description.

There are many different ways to test the usability of your website. This is one way that we have found to be one of the most effective and it should do the same for your website. Remember if you don’t give your customer what they want your competitor will. So make sure your website has the best usability possible.

Without traffic you have no business, but you need to make sure you are receiving targeted traffic. This means that if you sell cameras then you need to find people interested in cameras.

Pay Per Click or PPC is one of the quickest ways to get serious targeted traffic. It will cost you money but if it’s done correctly can produce tremendous results for your business. For instance if you are selling cameras you would have a better chance at converting your clicks into sales if you paid for the keyword phrase “canon cameras” instead of just “cameras”. Basically the more targeted the keywords you pay for are, the better conversion rate you will receive.

eBooks can also be a good way to get targeted traffic. First you must write an eBook that is targeted towards your niche. Two good places to sell your eBook are eBay and ClickBank. The purpose of this eBook is not to make a substantial amount of money but to build a list of customers interested in your niche. You want to make sure that your price stays between 10 and 30 dollars. This way it’s affordable and not priced so low that its value is degraded. You can’t just write any eBook however, you must right one that has serious benefits to the customer. This way when you promote your website or products in your eBook you will have a better chance of them making another purchase.